I'm having trouble with my pant sideseam. This bezier curve & I just don't get along. :-) Since shape is 3D, my Back Abd & Hip are the same length on the measuring tape although shaped differently.

If I use my actual measurements, the sideseam is almost a straight line with huge back darts. If I fudge & make the Bk Abd 1/2" smaller than Hip, I get a sideseam pretty curved above the Thigh since I have a small Back Waist that sends the sideseam out to my large Bk Abd & goes wide of my flat Bk Hip.

The smaller I make the Bk Abd compared to the Bk Hip, the smaller & more graceful the sideseam curve becomes following the Hip much closer. Finally at about a 2" difference I get a sideseam shape above the Thigh that looks like it might work. Also at the 2" difference between Abd & Hip the dart length option works properly.

I thought maybe I could go with a 2" smaller Bk Abd and then shorten the darts to get room back at the Abd. Most of my RTW pants that fit have really short back darts. But then I looked at the jeans draft and I didn't see an option to shorten the bk dart before it drafts the Bk & jeans yoke.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has actual measurements like this. Does anyone have advice/clues on how they dealt with it in the Career Pant and did it also work for the Jeans? Until I get the sideseam right, it is hard for me to evaluate the back crotch curve. I think I've been trying to solve the problem messing with the back crotch curve and it may partially be the sideseam.

I'm heading upstairs to sew a test classic pant with 1/2" difference between Bk Abd & Hip since I've clipped through seams etc on my last pair attempting to diagnose the problem. Then I'll try to post photos if my husband gets home early enough tonight and send a report with my measurements.

Thanks, Vicki

I was doing pattern prep with classical music on listening to it rain and I had a thought.

I went back into my chart and raised the Floor to Hip to within 1-1/2" of Abd instead of using the formula.

This caused the sideseam to straighten toward the thigh a little sooner so the curve wasn't as long. It also appeared to scoop the crotch just a little which was a pleasant surprise and something I could use.

It shortened the back darts to come close to solving that problem. And since I measure the same pretty much anywhere on my rear the hip placement doesn't effect the measurement. But it means that my front hip measurement that I had to increase to my front abd measurement would become an actual measurement.

Am I creating problems down the road by raising the Floor to Hip? Any thoughts?

Vicki

quote:

This caused the sideseam to straighten toward the thigh a little sooner so the curve wasn't as long. It also appeared to scoop the crotch just a little which was a pleasant surprise and something I could use.

It shortened the back darts to come close to solving that problem. And since I measure the same pretty much anywhere on my rear the hip placement doesn't effect the measurement. But it means that my front hip measurement that I had to increase to my front abd measurement would become an actual measurement.

Am I creating problems down the road by raising the Floor to Hip? Any thoughts?

Sorry to have not responded sooner, but this is another of those questions that has many answers and which would therefore benefit more from a discussion than a simple reply. But, I do have two hints that I can offer. The next MPD newsletter is just about done and it includes a much longer, more detailed and properly illustrated discussion of just this topic.

Hint one is just what you stumbled upon. When a pants outseam bulges outwards at either the hip or ab level, adjusting Floor To Hip (FTH) can often smooth the curve. FTH is ONLY used for shaping that curve at that point, so don't worry if your adjustment does not match your tape. You can adjust that number until you get a smooth curve. As long as it is at least as wide as your actual hip and ab width, it should work reasaonably well.

There is another fix, though, that is included in the Jeans Machine (which I see you have) and is also in "The Complete Pants Designer", which makes it work for all pants. To see a really interesting way to shape your outseam, get into The Jeans Machine (or Complete Pants Designer), draft some pants, load a chart that has more outseam curvature than you like at ab or hip. Then, bring up the Fit panel (one of the tabs at the top right of the tool) and look for "Front Outseam Adjust" or "Back Outseam Adjust" (whichever you need). Front default should be a quarter inch, usually. Enter a half inch. The grainline for the pants will be moved outwards, towards the outseam by an additional 1/4". This moves the center of the leg outwards also (it centers on the grainline). The effect on the shape of the outseam can be startling.

Play with that setting a bit and see what it does to your outseam. The larger a number you use, the flatter the outseam tends to get. It does move the center of your pants leg outwards away from your body center, so don't go further than you need to get a smooth outseam.

The Complete Pants Customizer makes that setting work for all MPD pants. We do not yet know how many people will benefit from this particular adjustment. It helped a few of the testers, but after we used it a lot, we built the results into the new MPD defaults to set the pants leg grainline position and now I believe it is not being used by any of the test team.

But, it may be very useful to others, particularly to those that have not already tried all the other tweaks (like adjusting Floor To Hip) to reshape the pants outseam.

More detail on this will be included in the next MPD newsletter. We'll try to get that out this week.

Hey, Thanks, Bob.

It would figure that I might need to use every known adjustment to get my pants to fit!

I have looked before and my front adjust is 1/4. I was afraid to play too much since I didn't totally understand what it did.

I'll be eagerly watching for the newsletter!!
Thanks for the quick reply.

Vicki

as long as tne abd and hip lines do not cross at the side seam you may be well off. Do what works- for YOU

Kaaren

quote:

Originally posted by Kaaren Hoback:
as long as the abd and hip lines do not cross at the side seam you may be well off. Do what works- for YOU
Kaaren

Kaaren ... you must have known that I'd be crazy enough to try that!

I did find out if you get the FTH too close to the Abd that it messes up the back dart on the basic blouse draft. Just lowering it a little appears to fix it.

The pair I made today with the low FTH has room for a baby Kangaroo at each sideseam below the abd. I'm working on the pair with the higher FTH now.

I'm making shorts so I'll have enough of the same fabric to also play with the Adjust variable to see which one comes closest to what I need for a sideseam.

I'll get there yet!

Vicki